'Are you crazy, Phoebe? I would not have Bertha with her impudence and her pedantry go among the Raymonds-no, not for the Bank of England.'
Those words darted into Phoebe's mind the perception why Mervyn was, in his strange way, promoting her intercourse with Moorcroft, not only as stamping her conduct with approval of people of their worth and weight, but as affording him some slight glimmering of hope. She could not but recollect that the extra recklessness of language which had pained her, ever since his rejection had diminished ever since her report of Sir John's notice of her at the justice room. Sister-like, she pitied and hoped; but the more immediate care extinguished all the rest, and she was longing for Miss Fennimore's sympathy, though grieving at the pain the disclosure must inflict. It could not be made till the girls were gone to bed, and at half-past nine, Phoebe sought the schoolroom, and told her tale. There was no answer, but an almost convulsive shudder; her hand was seized, and her finger guided to the line which Miss Fennimore had been reading in the Greek Testament-'By their fruits ye shall know them.'
Rallying before Phoebe could trace what was passing in her mind, she shut the book, turned her chair to the fire, invited Phoebe to another, and was at once the clear-headed, metaphysical governess, ready to discuss this grievous marvel. She was too generous by nature not to have treated her pupils with implicit trust, and this trust had been abused. Looking back, she and Phoebe could recollect moments when Bertha had been unaccounted for, and must have held interviews with Mr. Hastings. She had professed a turn for twilight walks in the garden, and remained out of doors when the autumn evenings had sent the others in, and on the Sunday afternoons, when Phoebe and Maria had been at church, Miss Fennimore reproached herself exceedingly with having been too much absorbed in her own readings to concern herself about the proceedings of a pupil, whose time on that day was at her own disposal. She also thought that there had been communications by look and sign across the pew at church; and she had remarked, though Phoebe had been too much occupied with her brother to perceive the restlessness that had settled on Bertha from the time of the departure of Mervyn's guests, and had once reproved her for lingering, as she thought, to gossip with Jane Hart in her bedroom. 'And now,' said Miss Fennimore, 'she should have a thorough change. Send her to school, calling it punishment, if you please, but chiefly for the sake of placing her among laughing girlish girls of the same age, and, above all, under a thoroughly religious mistress of wide intelligence, and who has never doubted.'
'But we were all to keep together, dear Miss Fennimore-you-'
'One whose mind has always been balancing between aspects of truth may instruct, but cannot educate. Few minds can embrace the moral virtues unless they are based on an undoubted foundation, connected with present devotional warmth, and future hopes and fears. I see this now; I once thought excellence would approve itself, for its own sake, to others, as it did to myself. I regarded Bertha as a fair subject for a full experiment of my system, with good disposition, good abilities, and few counter influences. I meant to cultivate self-relying, unprejudiced, effective good sense, and see-with prejudices have been rooted up restraints!'
'Education seems to me to have little to do with what people turn out,' said Phoebe. 'Look at poor Miss Charlecote and the Sandbrooks.'
'Depend upon it, Phoebe, that whatever harm may have ensued from her errors in detail, those young people will yet bless her for the principle she worked on. You can none of you bless me, for having guided the hands of the watch, and having left the mainspring untouched.'
Miss Fennimore had been, like Helvetius and the better class of encyclopaedists, enamoured of the moral virtues, but unable to perceive that they could not be separated from the Christian faith, and she learnt like them that, when doctrine ceased to be prominent, practice went after it. Bertha was her Jacobin-and seemed doubly so the next morning, when an interview took place, in which the young lady gave her to understand that she, like Phoebe, was devoid of the experience that would enable them to comprehend the sacred mutual duty of souls that once had spoken. Woman was no longer the captive of the seraglio, nor the chronicler of small beer. Intellectual training conferred rights of choice superior to conventional ties; and, as to the infallible discernment of that fifteen year old judgment, had not she the sole premises to go upon, she who alone had been admitted to the innermost of that manly existence?
'I always knew Jack to be a clever dog,' said Mervyn, when this was reported to him, 'but his soft sawder to a priggish metaphysical baby must have been the best fun in the world?'
Mervyn's great desire was to keep Bertha's folly as great a secret as possible; and, by his decision, she was told that grace should be granted her till Mr. Crabbe's arrival, when, unless she had renounced what he called her silly child's fancy, stringent measures would be taken, and she would be exposed to the family censure.
'So,' said Bertha, 'you expect to destroy the attraction of souls by physical force!'
And Phoebe wrote to Robert a sorrowful letter, chiefly consisting of the utmost pleadings for Mervyn and Bertha that her loving heart could frame. She was happier when she had poured out her troubles, but grieved when no answer came by the next post. Robert's displeasure must be great-and indeed but too justly so-since all this mischief was the consequence of the disregard of his wishes. Yet justice was hard between brothers and sisters, especially when Mervyn was in such a suffering state, threatened constantly by attacks of his complaint, which were only warded off by severe and weakening treatment. Phoebe was so necessary to his comfort in waiting on him, and trying to while away his tedious hours of inaction and oppression, that she had little time to bestow upon Bertha, nor, indeed, was talking of any use, as it only gave the young lady an occasion for pouring forth magniloquent sentiments, utterly heedless of the answers. Sad, lonely, and helpless were Phoebe's feelings, but she was patient, and still went on step by step through the strange tangle, attending to Mervyn hour by hour, always with a gentle cheerful word and smile, and never trusting herself, even when alone, to think of the turmoil and break up that must ensue on her guardian's arrival.
All was darkness and perplexity before her, but submission and trust were her refuge, and each day of waiting before the crisis was to her feelings a gain.
CHAPTER XXI
O fy gar ride and fy gar rin
And haste ye to find these traitors agen,
For shees be burnt and hees been slein,
The wearifu gaberlunzie man.
Some rade upon horse, some ran afit,
The wife was wud and out of her wit,
She couldna gang, nor yet could she sit,
But aye did curse and ban.-KING JAMES V
Mervyn and Phoebe were playing at billiards, as a means of inducing him to take exercise enough to make him sleep. The governess and the two girls were gone to the dentist's at Elverslope. The winter's day was closing in, when there was a knock at the door, and they beheld Miss Fennimore, deadly white, and Maria, who flew up to Phoebe, crying-'Bertha's gone, Phoebe!'
'The next up-train stops at Elverslope at 8.30,' said the governess, staring in Mervyn's face, as though repeating a lesson. 'A carriage will be here by seven. I will bring her home, or never return.'
'Gone!'
'It was inexcusable in me, sir,' said Miss Fennimore, resting a hand on the table to support herself. 'I thought it needlessly galling to let her feel herself watched; and at her request, let her remain in the waiting-room while her sister was in the dentist's hands. When, after an hour, Maria was released, she was gone.'
'Alone?' cried Phoebe.
'Alone, I hope. I went to the station; the train had been ten minutes gone; but a young lady, alone, in mourning, and with no luggage but a little bag, had got in there for London. Happily, they did not know her; and it was the parliamentary train, which is five hours on the road. I telegraphed at once to your brother to meet her at the terminus.'
'I have no hope,' said Mervyn, doggedly, seating himself on the table, his feet dangling. 'He will be in the lowest gutter of Whittingtonia, where no one can find him. The fellow will meet that miserable child, go off to Ostend this very night, marry her before to-morrow morning. There's an end of it!'
'Where does Mr. Hastings lodge, sir?'
